


Imitation Is a Dangerous Flattery

by thisiswhyishouldntwritefanfic



Series: Relative Innocence [1]
Category: Heathers (1988)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Case Fic, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, almost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-24
Updated: 2017-11-24
Packaged: 2019-02-06 04:55:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12810075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiswhyishouldntwritefanfic/pseuds/thisiswhyishouldntwritefanfic
Summary: Years after surviving the bombing at the school, two people on separate rocky paths to redemption are forced together when it looks like one of them is killing again.





	Imitation Is a Dangerous Flattery

**Author's Note:**

> In my recent rediscovery of a certain actor and attempt to watch a lot of his body of work, I did something I'd never done before. I watched Heathers. I swore I wouldn't because my interest was in Christian Slater and not only was he supposed to be insane but also die, and I figured that wasn't something I'd enjoy watching.
> 
> I came away from the movie surprised, and a bit concerned, too, since I ended up sympathizing more with JD than anyone else, which is a little... worrisome. I went searching for stories where he lived and where he wasn't quite as damaged (though I'm a sucker for damaged characters.)
> 
> And I didn't get enough of a fix, so I tried my hand at my own so I could shut up my brain and finish my nano like a responsible person.

* * *

“Thank the spirits for me,” Mrs. Hammond said, tears in her eyes as she left the office. One would think that good news shouldn't require tears, but some people chose to cry when they were happy, too, and for all the years he'd spent trying to understand the mind, that one still eluded him.

Probably because he didn't know what happy was, and some would argue the same was true about humanity and sanity as well.

The door shut with a little ring behind the woman, and Enid looked back at him, about to say some very familiar words. People were entirely too predictable once you knew them.

“Another satisfied customer.”

“You can take that to the bank later. Rent's due Tuesday, and without that, the check will bounce,” he said, not looking at her. He went into the back office and pulled off the heavy robe, dropping it on the chair. He pulled a dark sweater over his head, dislodging the clip that held it back and made it seem longer than it was. He ran his hand through his already disheveled hair, turning it every which way he could, making it stick up in places, which always amused him.

“Why won't you ever admit that this is based on science? You wouldn't have to put on the robes and the hair—I'm still surprised you don't do make up.”

“The hood is usually enough for dramatic effect,” he said, not looking back at Enid. For all she worked with a fraud and knew it, she was rather innocent, and he didn't know what he thought about that most days.

“Come on, Jay. You hated it. You hate the act, you hate the make up, you really hate faking that your hair is long enough to put in a ponytail, but you do it every time. I don't understand it. You have dozens of degrees, right? You're always in those psychology books. You could be profiling people for the FBI or something, but you're here.”

He gave the peeling paint a glance and nodded, accepting her point at least about the last part. This was a low rent hellhole of an office, and the whole thing screamed sketchy, but what Enid—sweet, silly Enid—never seemed to grasp was that that was the whole point of it.

He could tell her, but he wouldn't. He knew she'd never accept the surface reasons he'd give for wanting to stay off the radar like this. He would never tell her the truth. That was dead and buried like he was supposed to be, and it ended there.

“You shouldn't be here,” he reminded her. “The bank closes at six, and it's quarter 'til.”

She shook her head, swearing under her breath again. “Come on. Why do it? You are so much better than this. Your mind is amazing. You know people better than they know themselves, and you help people. You've caught a bunch of sick, sick people and made it so they went away for life, but instead of getting credit for that, you pretend you're a psychic and don't even get paid for it.”

“You're holding a check.”

“It was funny, you know. On _Psych._ The fake psychic thing was funny. And that other show, _the Mentalist,_ they didn't use as much humor, but it was still a good idea. This... isn't.”

He rose, crossing over to her. He should have fired her the first time they had this argument, but having an assistant stay for longer than a couple months was a record for him, and he kind of liked her, like a younger sister, maybe. There wasn't quite enough of an age difference between them to make her his daughter and that idea scared the hell out of him. 

One thing he should never be was a parent.

“You know what I have, Niddie? Street smarts. That's something I have in spades, but street smarts don't mean anything to those people you seem to think I can impress. Degrees? No. I didn't finish high school. So now that you know that, you can stop these dreams of turning me legitimate and go get yourself a real job.”

Enid sighed. “It's called a GED, and you could still try college if that's true, but thanks for lying to me again.”

“You knew what you were signing up for when you walked in the door,” he reminded her. This place had never looked that upfront, and the name was a dead giveaway.

Funny how some people always tried to see the good when there wasn't any to find.

“It's times like this when I think you deserve the name you picked,” she muttered, grabbing the door handle so she could slam it shut behind her. “And don't tell me you didn't. I'm not stupid. I know Judas isn't your real name.”

“It may as well have been,” he said as she did slam the door shut, knocking more plaster off the wall. “It also could have been Manson, Harris, Klebold, or McVeigh.”

He gave some thought as to whether or not she'd recognize the significance of those names and in the end, and then he shook his head. It didn't matter. That was done now, and while this life was far from perfect, it was nothing less than he deserved.

* * *

“I need to contact the spirits.”

Enid put a tea cup in front of him, knowing as always when he was close to one of his migraines or snapping and yelling at the customer. He spoiled the act, and that was never good, but neither was lack of sleep and too much alcohol.

He missed those days of casually destroying his liver. It had made the first few years easier to bear until he found this particular odd path of quasi-redemption.

“Spirits don't come when you call them,” he told her, reaching for the tea and taking a sip. Calming himself, he drank some more until he could continue as Judas Dane, strange mystic and purveyor of unholy bullshit. “You have to be willing to wait for them to respond.”

“I know, and I am. I tried already, once. I went to a medium. She said she could tell me why my daughter died. Another one told me she could contact my daughter, but they couldn't. They didn't. The one said my girl was sad over a boy and a test. The other said my daughter couldn't accept who she was and wanted to date girls.”

He set down his tea. “You don't think she was closeted?”

“She had no reason to be, and while she had gotten some bad grades the weeks before, she was pulling things together, and her last boyfriend was out of her life months ago. She seemed fine. She was happy. She was the last person anyone would think would do such a thing. I knew her. We were close. We spoke daily. She would have told me. I would have seen it.”

Enid gave the woman a look of sympathy. “I'm so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Grant.”

“I just need to know why she died. I don't want another lie. I want the truth.”

“Your daughter didn't leave a note?”

Grant shook her head. “No. She didn't. She was alone at the house, and the police said they didn't find any sign anyone else was there, so it must have been a suicide. I just don't understand. She was so... bright. So happy. She wouldn't have killed herself, not like this.”

“And it couldn't have been an accident?” Enid asked, always the one to ask the obvious questions, the stupid ones that a psychic couldn't dare ask.

“She drank poison. It wasn't an accident. That was all that was in the glass.”

He swallowed. He'd say this was a damned prank, but that would mean this woman knew who he was, and that was not at all likely. He had paid a lot for reconstructive surgery, and he had his face back, but that didn't make him recognizable, and who the hell was looking for a kid who supposedly blew himself up at his school? No one.

“Your daughter drank drain cleaner and crashed into glass table.”

Grant nodded. “Yes. It was horrible. She was cut all over, so many little cuts... they told us she would have lived, though. The cuts weren't that deep. It was the poison that killed her, but why would she drink it next to that table? She knew. She had to know...”

This couldn't be happening. He had said that expecting to be wrong, to have her tell him he was a fraud and leave.

“You can help me,” Grant said, near hysterical. “You know. You knew what happened, what she did and what happened when she fell. You have to tell me what else the spirits know. Why did my daughter die?”

“Because someone else lived,” he heard himself say and almost swore. He hadn't meant to say anything. He wanted to send her far away, not convince her he was a genuine psychic, which that line seemed to do. It also had Enid in all her curious glory staring at him. “That's all I know, Mrs. Grant. I'd have to retreat and meditate to get more.”

“Oh, yes, yes, please,” she said, reaching for his hand. He pulled away from her. He would not do that, didn't want to be touched.

“You'll have to excuse him,” Enid said, hurrying into her usual role of assistant instead of gawker. “We'll contact you if we learn more.”

She walked Grant to the door, shutting it behind her. She locked the door and flipped the sign to closed. Turning around, she faced him. “You want to tell me what the hell that was?”

“Don't worry. I haven't gotten any actual psychic powers.”

“Well, on the one hand it would be a relief because then this wouldn't be a fraud, but at the same time, you go in with psychology and profiles and do the work of cop without badge so it's not just a fraud. It's a bit more than that.”

“It isn't.”

“You know something, though. You knew without me googling anything, without me hacking anything. How? Why?”

“I learned a lot in my misspent youth,” he told her. “Give it two hours, call Mrs. Grant back, and tell her we have nothing for her. The spirits won't talk. If she tries to offer you more money, tell her where to shove it.”

“Jay—”

“We can't help her. We can't help anyone.”

Hell, what he was going to do would probably get him killed.

* * *

“You can't keep this a secret much longer.”

“We have to,” Veronica said. She caught the look her superior was giving her, but she couldn't let that happen. With each new death, she became more and more sure that she'd imagined that last moment with JD. He should be dead. He'd blown himself up. She swore she'd seen him die, but had she somehow missed it? Had she flinched and looked away?

“We can't let word get out that someone is murdering teenage girls and staging their deaths to look like suicides—like one particular suicide.”

“We can't leave the public uninformed. People are at risk.”

“From a serial killer we can't prove exists,” Veronica reminded him. If he hadn't liked her so much, if he hadn't appreciated her “insight” into the criminal mind, even he wouldn't believe it. While none of the girls had left behind a note, the rest of the scene seemed like suicide. There was nothing besides one agent's past to say it wasn't, and even then, she hadn't told Richards everything.

He knew that this killer was imitating Heather Chandler's supposed suicide, but not that she'd been murdered. Only Veronica and a dead kid knew that, but this killer had repeated that moment over and over again, finding a popular blonde and killing her on a Saturday morning, leaving her body in the middle of a broken glass table.

They were looking at the fifth one now, and that should not be possible. JD was dead. He was the only one who would kill like that, the only one who would lie them out as bait for her.

“This may only be a theory, but it is one that makes sense, and we can't sit on it forever. We have a profile. We need to get it out there and try and get ahead of this thing. We can't let this psycho kill another teenage girl.”

Veronica nodded. She felt the same, and a part of her knew she should turn herself in here and now for the part she'd played in Heather's death all those years ago. She should do it, and she tried to, but the words didn't come out.

“I owe you for bringing this to us, for showing us what it is,” Richards told her, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She stared at him and wished she was a better person. She had tried to tell others in the past, never getting past she felt guilty for Heather's death, and while she'd hoped years of public service would change that, that this job would help her atone for her part in all of that, but even after she'd changed things at school, it wasn't enough. “But I won't let this go on any longer.”

“Don't do this just to cover your ass, Richards. If we really had anything, we'd be using it, and we don't. We have... my word, and we both know that's not good enough.”

“You're a good agent and—”

“I'm a lousy agent, and I barely hang onto this job. Don't kid yourself,” Veronica said. She knew she was far from stable. She knew that her instincts weren't half as good as other agents. She saw JD in too many of the killers. She was one step from the nuthouse herself, and it was probably where she had always deserved to be. She was far from right, and stopping JD hadn't redeemed her. Nothing could, and she knew that now.

She was only staying to find this killer, and then she would end it.

“I am going to call a press conference for tomorrow,” Richards said. “Get what you can from here, meet up with Jacobs and Stephens, and we'll go over everything from this latest victim then.”

She nodded. She didn't expect to find anything else, but she wasn't ready to leave yet, either.

* * *

She walked back into her apartment, shutting the door behind her.

She leaned against it, closing her eyes. So much for absolution. It didn't exist. It never had.

She needed to end this.

“I didn't do it.”

Veronica's eyes snapped open, and she stared in horror at her nightmare come to life. No, she wasn't seeing him as she had that day at school. He wore dark clothes, as always, but he'd grown and aged, filling out more, not thin and wiry as he'd been when she knew him. His hair was longer, at least in front, she thought, and it seemed lighter, like he had highlights or something in it.

This was impossible. And insane.

“You're dead. You can't be here.”

“You only thought you wanted to watch me die,” he told her. “I saw you close your eyes just before it happened.”

“Not long enough to for you to get that bomb off.”

He looked like he wanted to laugh. “That's actually a bit of a funny story, but we don't have time for the full explanation of how I survived. I came to tell you that I had nothing to do with that girl's death.”

“You're a liar,” she said. “You did it. You're the only one that would.”

“No, I'm not, and if you weren't so damned hung up on me being completely psychotic, you'd see that, but you can't see that any more than you can see how much of this is your own guilt,” he said. “You had a part in that same as I did, but instead of telling anyone that or even exposing me, you let them all go down as suicides to save your own skin.”

“You son of a—”

“Careful,” he said. “I'll tolerate a lot from you, Veronica, but not that. My mother wasn't perfect, and her death sure as hell screwed me over, but if you call her that, I'll forget the promise I made and I will hurt you.”

“No. I carry a gun. I'm an agent. I will stop you now like I did before.”

He shook his head. “I've always been the more dangerous of the two of us. Just because these days I seem more on the side of the angels doesn't mean I've ever been good.”

Veronica could agree with that much, though her traitorous mind went to the moments between them that had been sweet and wonderful and everything she'd thought she wanted and knew of love. “You're killing girls to get to me. I know you're not good.”

“Someone is copycatting Heather Chandler's murder. That does not mean it's me. It might not even have anything to do with you.”

“Bullshit. It's about you.”

“I haven't killed anyone since I left Sherwood. You can't say the same thing, can you?”

Veronica swallowed. She'd had to fire her weapon on the job. “I am not the same as you.”

“And I did not kill those girls.”

“You can't prove that.”

“I can. And I will.”

She shuddered, about to move for her gun like she should have to begin with. Maybe if her brain had caught up with her sooner, acknowledging that she wasn't hallucinating a ghost and was actually seeing him, it would have been different. She would have been more like a responsible agent.

“You can't. I know you did this.”

“You don't know me anymore, Veronica darling. This time, I'm innocent.”


End file.
